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Apple Chip Chief Johny Srouji Could Be Next to Go as Exodus Continues
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Comments claiming that Apple doesn’t care about its customers and only about making profit are amusing. Apple would never have reached its current position if what they sell didn’t satisfy consumers.
Sounds like you want the 16e or 17e if that comes out in the spring.
Of course they care about customers.
It's the balance and allocation of care that has arguably shifted pretty heavily towards profits, particularly when one looks at what gets made (or not).
I can’t figure this out either. I think people are blaming Tim Cook for inflation 🤣
Every main exec will leave until Tim Spindler is ousted.
Apple's senior vice president of hardware technologies Johny Srouji could be the next leading executive to leave the company amid an alarming exodus of leading employees, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
Srouji apparently recently told CEO Tim Cook that he is "seriously considering leaving" in the near future. He intends to join another company if he departs. Srouji leads Apple's chip design and pioneered the transition to Apple silicon.
Earlier this week, it emerged that Meta had hired multiple significant Apple employees, including longtime Apple designer Alan Dye, while conducting its own recruiting blitz for AI and smart glasses development. Meanwhile, Apple announced the retirement of Senior Vice President and General Counsel Kate Adams, Lisa Jackson, Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, and AI chief John Giannandrea. Earlier this year, Apple lost Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, who is retiring, and Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri. There have also been rumors about Apple CEO Tim Cook retiring, with rumors suggesting he is preparing to leave his role as soon as next year.
Gurman says that the losses are partly due to veteran executives nearing retirement age, but there is still a "disconcerting brain drain" taking place in the company. Nevertheless, Gurman says the accumulative weight of the departures all adds up to "one of the most tumultuous stretches of Cooks tenure." Some of the losses are said to be a "cause for deep concern," and Cook is now looking to prevent further loss of leading talent with stronger compensation packages.
Gurman notes that "Apple hasn't launched a successful new product category in a decade," leaving it increasingly vulnerable to having its talent poached by more agile rivals who are said to be better equipped to develop the next generation of devices and AI technologies.
Cook himself is thought to be likely to join the exodus and step down in the not-too-distant future. He turned 65 last month and now exhibits a noticeable, unexplained tremor in his hands. He is likely to transition to the role of chairman, rather than vacate the company entirely.
The departure of Srouji is said to be "a more imminent risk" and Cook is purportedly working hard to retain him by offering a substantial pay package and the potential of more responsibility. Some executives have suggested elevating Srouji to the role of chief technology officer. This would move him to oversee a broad range of hardware engineering and silicon technologies, making him Apple's second-most powerful executive.
Gurman says this change would likely require John Ternus to be promoted to CEO, but Srouji apparently would prefer to not work under a different CEO, even with an expanded remit. If he does leave, Srouji would likely be replaced by Zongjian Chen or Sribalan Santhanam. Beyond Srouji and the other reported departures, Apple is believed to be contending with a significant talent drain among its key engineers.
Gurman explains that there has been "a broader collapse within Apple's artificial intelligence organization" triggered by AI models chief Ruoming Pang departing earlier this year, along with colleagues such as Tom Gunter and Frank Chu. Apple lost Siri and search overseer Robby Walker, as well as his replacement, Ke Yang, to Meta.
Apple's AI group is apparently suffering from low morale and there is growing worry over the increasing use of external AI technology such as Google Gemini. Around a dozen of Apple's leading AI researchers have also now departed.
The company's AI robotics software team has seen widespread departures, including its leader Jian Zhang, who joined Meta. The user interface team has also lost members, such as Billy Sorrentino, culminating in Dye's exit.
Apple's hardware design group "has been nearly wiped out," with many employees vacating to other companies or following former design chief Jony Ive to his studio, LoveFrom. Abidur Chowdhury, the designer behind the iPhone Air who narrated its unveiling in September, left for an AI startup.
The company has lost a key director in charge of display technologies, Cheng Chen, to OpenAI. He also oversaw the optics of the Vision Pro headset. In addition, one of Apple’s top hardware engineering executives, Tang Tan, similarly left for OpenAI.
Apple has even lost the dean of Apple University, Richard Locke. Apple University is the internal program intended to preserve the company's practices and culture following the death of Steve Jobs.
The exodus has become a major concern for Apple's leadership, which has instructed human resources to ramp up recruitment and retention efforts. See Gurman's full report for more information.
Article Link: Apple Chip Chief Johny Srouji Could Be Next to Go as Exodus Continues
I guess we may as well stop reading MacRumors, now that Apple is doomed. I need to find something else to fill the free time I'll have. /s
iPhone Air is probably the ONLY good thing to have been released by Apple over the last three years.
I don't hate him. I give him a ton of credit along with Woz. Still, it is what it is regarding unsuccessful products released under him.
It speaks to the chant many still cling to: "Apple needs a product guy as CEO."
Can't ignore Jobs' general philosophy, which was to make computers smaller, thinner, more appliance-like, and less serviceable with fewer slots and ports. That is as much his legacy as anything else.
I’m pretty sure Tim Cook isn’t reading this forum…
So Srouji wants Tim's job.
Rumours around Tim retiring and Ternus getting CEO, this is his play for the top job.
"but Srouji apparently would prefer to not work under a different CEO" = "Give it to me or I'm out"
Rumours around Tim retiring and Ternus getting CEO, this is his play for the top job.
"but Srouji apparently would prefer to not work under a different CEO" = "Give it to me or I'm out"
The only individuals who say this are the idiots who love short-term dividend gains or IAP-reliant developers (true scum), as opposed to organic growth resulting from true innovation. Remember when Apple distributed ZERO dividends under SJ?
Intel - complacency. It was the bottom line and repeating that status quo. They became completely blindsided by the GPU race by blatantly ignoring anything around them. And in several turns and events, rather than reinvestment they CUT the innovation departments for the sake of holding onto the purse, IP and whatever else keeps their valuation.
Intel's rise and fall: A timeline of what went wrong
Explore Intel's rise and fall, from tech dominance to decline, facing tough competition and dealing with past decisions that shaped its current challenges.
IBM - again, dominance and market shift. Selling off of their consumer products and severing their connection to the end user. Guided by technology iterations vs problem solving and consumer sentiment. Hit several financial snags and at one point losing $8 a year - cut innovation departments and sold off hardware IP to lean toward AI and cloud computing like everyone else.
The Rise and Fall of the ‘IBM Way’
What the tech pioneer can, and can’t, teach us
Forest for the trees.
If you chose to be in the hands of end user, you must solve the problems of the end user. It's not how much faster your copy and paste is - it's the context of what the user is attempting to do that drives the need of that copy and paste in the first place.
Go with bean counter and technology mind to lead the charge and you gut the culture that made Apple different than it's competitors. Go with marketing/product/design leadership and you at least have a chance to adhere to why people buy your products.
There are a few things at play here that should be taken apart:
- Execs with planned retirement retiring
- Non-functional execs leaving
- Talent leaving
Now only this last category is a concern, but might not be in the long term. The thing is that most of these people leave for venture capital or otherwise rich owner hobbies “Ai” read: LLM efforts. This might be hot and pay 10 times the money Apple Pay’s, but they’ll all be out of a job within a few months with a maximum of 2 years. There has been an exodus from Apple before to Tesla, but most of these people left Tesla within a few years and quite a few returned to Apple. I see the same happening here.
When Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia and others are all done pumping around the money in each other and don’t find another revenue source the whole LLM hype will collapse like the .com-bubble. Yes, there is a future to LLM’s, but it isn’t the only thing in the world that’s important. The worth of some of these companies exists for 60-80% of “AI-hype”. That’s insane. Nobody found a good way to monetize it yet. These engineers cost millions of dollars a year, training a new model also and keeping things running costs way more than those companies are gonna make from LLMs in the coming years.
- Execs with planned retirement retiring
- Non-functional execs leaving
- Talent leaving
Now only this last category is a concern, but might not be in the long term. The thing is that most of these people leave for venture capital or otherwise rich owner hobbies “Ai” read: LLM efforts. This might be hot and pay 10 times the money Apple Pay’s, but they’ll all be out of a job within a few months with a maximum of 2 years. There has been an exodus from Apple before to Tesla, but most of these people left Tesla within a few years and quite a few returned to Apple. I see the same happening here.
When Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia and others are all done pumping around the money in each other and don’t find another revenue source the whole LLM hype will collapse like the .com-bubble. Yes, there is a future to LLM’s, but it isn’t the only thing in the world that’s important. The worth of some of these companies exists for 60-80% of “AI-hype”. That’s insane. Nobody found a good way to monetize it yet. These engineers cost millions of dollars a year, training a new model also and keeping things running costs way more than those companies are gonna make from LLMs in the coming years.
Spot-on. It's all about Apple customers who love to purchase Apple products. That's what drives Apple's success with resulting massive profits and company valuation.
Apparently many people still don't understand how that works.
I (and others) have been warning for years that this is how it happens. The stock looks good, the money is rolling in, but the management is out of touch and they don't see the critical problems mounting.
For the sake of the economy I hope this doesn't tank the stock price eventually, but this is how it happens. Gradually, then suddenly.
For the sake of the economy I hope this doesn't tank the stock price eventually, but this is how it happens. Gradually, then suddenly.
Actually, I think he does read it. Products like the AVP and the upcoming Flop are the kind that the masses won’t use. Only tech enthusiasts, like the ones on this forum. In fact, I believe he has been reading this forum a bit too much. Maybe that’s also why the iPhone Pro Max is so thick.
I'm pretty sure the church suffers from the same skepticism as your comment yet they still pray weekly to that thing in the sky. I can pray to the gods of Tim Cook.
In my opinion, it is pointless to try to retain people with absurd figures. You risk overpaying people who then don't prove themselves to be that great outside of a certain environment or team (think about what soccer players are paid).
It is better to have motivated people, paid according to merit, who believe in the company's vision.
Perhaps the solution lies in reapplying the ‘Jobs cure’, rationalizing product lines, and focusing on quality and real innovations that can realistically be mass-produced at affordable prices for the average person.
I am pretty sure his glasses are @Tim Apple’s Glasses
Apple seems to think working at Apple is equal to a higher pay packet. They have been underpaying everyone for years. People like Srouji can pretty much get any job they want.
Current UX across all the devices is an abomination, at best. Simply terrible. Now, that said, I have tinkered with the latest offerings from several other companies and across different hardware platforms, and Apple still leads the way in a cohesive, unified vertical stack. But the UX is getting flashy, cluttered, disjointed, and has certainly traded usability for "pizzaz." I guess that's what the TikTok crowd demands, though.
Apple, for a long time, stood for elegance and usability, with no excuses. Simplicity, effectiveness, and easy to learn... those are almost all gone now, though one can say that the iPhone Air is elegant (hold one and it's pretty awesome). But I dont own one, and it runs the same crappy iOS that my 17 Pro does... I shouldn't have to tap through three screens to do something simple, when one tap will do (and until now, has been the norm)...
Apple, for a long time, stood for elegance and usability, with no excuses. Simplicity, effectiveness, and easy to learn... those are almost all gone now, though one can say that the iPhone Air is elegant (hold one and it's pretty awesome). But I dont own one, and it runs the same crappy iOS that my 17 Pro does... I shouldn't have to tap through three screens to do something simple, when one tap will do (and until now, has been the norm)...
Year 16 of Apple being doomed based on these comments. I’m sure it’ll happen someday if you keep saying it.